I miss the days when a televised saturday afternoon Grambling game mattered. I never really bothered to ask why. Just knew I would rather watch an Eddie Robinson coached team than the steady diet of Notre Dame shoved down my throat every week.

He conceded in the mid 1990s, soon before he retired, he feared hanging it up and dying soon after, like Bear Bryant. Robinson retired in 1997 and lived another decade, but Alzheimer's kept it from being golden. Sad.

Had the honor of covering a few Grambling games. Coach Robinson was a class act he always made sure that wherever Grambling played, there was going going to be a show from the cheerleaders to the band to the players.
He knew he was better than MANY coaches at the D-1 level but he felt he had to hold the banner up for guys like him who weren't given a chance to move up. He was a regular, until his health failed, at pro coaching clinics. He knew how to motivate and intimidate while being fair-minded.
Eddie Robinson was Class with a capital C. The late Bear Bryant had the utmost respect for him.